NASA may be aiming for the moon and even Mars but it has not yet laid the groundwork for modernizing the aging space shuttle fleet, a government report said on Friday.
A year after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts, NASA has not figured out how to upgrade the three remaining shuttles to make them safe and usable for the next 15 years and possibly longer, the General Accounting Office said.
The three remaining shuttles have been grounded and no return to flight is expected before September. This leaves the International Space Station with a two-person skeleton crew, entirely dependent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.
Work to finish the orbiting station cannot continue without the shuttle.
And NASA is contemplating the abandonment of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope because it cannot use the shuttle to make repairs -- much to the dismay of astronomers.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, was asked to take a look at NASA's plans after the Columbia accident highlighted the need to fix up the 20-year-old space shuttle.
Originally designed to be used for 10 years, the aging shuttles are not as safe as they could be and there is no replacement in sight.
"The shuttle will now be needed for another two decades," the GAO report reads.
"Efforts to upgrade the shuttle have been stymied by the agency's inability to develop a long-term strategic investment plan to fly the shuttle safely and a systematic approach for defining the spacecraft's requirements because its life expectancy and mission have continued to change from an original design of a 10-year life to the year 2020 and possibly beyond."
Costly upgrade
NASA has said it could cost $300 million to $500 million a year to upgrade the shuttle -- or a total of $5 billion to $8 billion through 2020.
This estimate does not include potentially expensive components such as a crew escape system.
Redesigned rocket boosters could also add to the cost.
NASA also faces on-ground problems, such as the roof on the vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center, which has bubbles on it and which will cost $16 million to replace, the GAO said.
"Until NASA finalizes the basic requirements for the shuttle and further improves its process for identifying and selecting upgrades, it will be difficult to accurately and reliably estimate the total cost of upgrades through 2020," the GAO concluded.
In January, William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight, said the space agency was addressing problems with the shuttles' reinforced carbon-carbon material, which covers parts of the vehicles' wings and which was damaged by falling insulation foam during Columbia's launch.
The breach allowed superheated gas to penetrate the craft and cause its break-up during reentry .
NASA also says it is working on a way to spot and repair damage to shuttles while they are in orbit.
On Jan. 20, an independent expert panel found that time pressure had become a "destructive force" at NASA, and said plans to correct this were being developed. That report also said it was too early to say when the shuttles might fly again.
In January, President George W. Bush unveiled an ambitious space plan that includes a human mission to the moon by 2020 and an eventual human mission to Mars. The president has not talked about the plan since then.
